1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and an article of manufacture for product configuration.
2. Description of the Related Art
A storage subsystem, such as the International Business Machines (xe2x80x9cIBMxe2x80x9d) Enterprise Storage Server (xe2x80x9cESSxe2x80x9d)**, may receive Input/Output (I/O) requests directed toward an attached storage system. The attached storage system may comprise an enclosure including numerous interconnected disk drives, such as a Direct Access Storage Device (xe2x80x9cDASDxe2x80x9d), a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (xe2x80x9cRAIDxe2x80x9d Array), Just A Bunch of Disks (xe2x80x9cJBODxe2x80x9d), etc. Further details of storage subsystems, such as the ESS, are described in the publication entitled xe2x80x9cIBM Enterprise Storage Serverxe2x80x9d (copyright IBM Corp. 1999, 2001), which publication is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. xe2x89xa0**IBM and Enterprise Storage Server are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp.
A customer may order a storage subsystem in certain physical and logical configurations. The physical configuration may include the server type of the ESS unit, the type of the disk drives, etc. The logical configuration may include the network configuration of the various components of the storage subsystem, the partitioning of the disk drives, etc. A manufacturer may build, configure and deliver the storage subsystem to the customer based on the physical and logical configurations.
To facilitate the process of product ordering, manufacturing and delivery, a person, such as a storage specialist, may evaluate a customer""s storage requirements and recommend a set of ESS features that would satisfy the expectations of the customer for storage capacity, performance, etc. The storage specialist may record a set of logical configurations based on the set of recommended ESS features. The customer may send a purchase order to the manufacturer based on the recommendations of the storage specialist. Once the ESS unit is delivered, the ESS unit may be configured based on the recorded set of logical configurations.
Notwithstanding the prior art techniques for product ordering, manufacturing and configuration, there is a need in the art for improved techniques for product ordering, manufacturing and configuration.
Provided are a method, system, and article of manufacture for product configuration. Order information is received for a product. Based on the received order information, configuration information for the product is generated via a simulator to simulate the product. The configuration information is sent, wherein the configuration information is used to configure the product.
Additional implementations are provided, wherein subsequent to generating the configuration information and prior to configuring the product, the configuration information is sent to a sender of the order information. An approval of the configuration information is received from the sender of the order information.
Further implementations are provided, wherein a generator of the configuration information interacts with a sender of the order information to modify the order information based on potential valid configurations of the product generated by the simulator. Additional implementations are provided, wherein the simulator can simulate instances of a plurality of products and can check for valid configurations for each instance.
Implementations of the invention enable the delivery of a product, that is manufactured and configured according to a customer order information with the aid of a configuration application. The configuration application ensures that the customer order information is valid by simulating potential configurations of the corresponding product on a simulator.